Carrier grade content router

• US 20050137998A1
• Filed: 12/16/2004
• Published: 06/23/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 12/19/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Solace Corp.
• Original Assignee: Solace Systems, Inc. (United Kingdom)
• Inventors: Barnes, Martin, Ashton, Peter, Bertin, Greg, Pochopsky, David, Burwell, Wayne, Betts, Craig
• Granted Patent: US 7,844,733 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/143 Markup, e.g. Standard Generalized Markup Language [SGML] or Document Type Definition [DTD]
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/154 Tree transformation for tree-structured or markup documents, e.g. XSLT, XSL-FO or stylesheets
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1001 for accessing one among a plurality of replicated servers
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1006 with static server selection, e.g. the same server being selected for a specific client

Abstract

A carrier grade content router, includes a distinct management plane for housing externally visible management applications, and coordinating and relaying external management requests to appropriate underlying application code in the router; a distinct control plane for running control protocols required within an XML routed network; and a distinct data plane for receiving and forwarding customer data. Some functions can be implemented in software or via a hardware accelerator.

Claims

1. A carrier grade router for use in a content routed network, comprising:

a management plane for housing externally visible management applications, and coordinating and relaying external management requests to appropriate underlying application code in the router;

a distinct control plane for running control protocols required within said mark-up language routed network; and

a distinct data plane for receiving and forwarding customer data.

2. The router of claim 1, wherein said content routed network is an XML routed network.

3. The router in claim 1, wherein said management plane houses said management applications via implementation of specific protocols, each in a distinct sub-system.

4. The router of claim 3, wherein said specific protocols are CLI/SNMP/WebGUI.

5. The router of claim 1, wherein said management plane is configured to coordinate and relay said management requests via a management plane controller that forwards management requests and responses between management applications and other applications in said content router.

6. The router of claim 1, wherein said control protocols are subject to constraints to ensure independence of the control plane from the design and location of the data plane.

7. The router of claim 2, wherein said data plane is responsible for the following tasks:

Terminating and de-muxing (ie separating control from data plane traffic) HTTP connections;

Parsing XML documents and searching the CFIB database for matching XPath Expressions; and

Performing document and application level transformations;

as well as the multicast forwarding of individual documents.

8. The router of claim 7, further comprising a companion hardware accelerator associated respectively with one or more of said tasks.

9. The router of claim 8, wherein XML parsing functions and CFIB lookup functions are implemented in the companion hardware accelerator.

10. The router of claim 9, which is configured to permit access to the data plane components from the rest of the system through software abstraction techniques to allow other software subsystems to be independent of the data plane being implemented in hardware or software.

11. The router of claim 9, incorporating multiple said data planes, each said data plane serving as a Forwarding element.

12. The router of claim 11, further comprising a load balancer to performing load balancing across multiple forwarding elements.

13. The router of claim 12, wherein said load balancer is configured to perform load balancing by one or more methods selected from the group consisting of:

Interface Load Balancing;

Socket Based Load Balancing;

Publisher Based Load Balancing;

Entitlement Group Load Balancing;

Dynamic Usage Based Load Balancing; and

Preliminary Content Inspection Based Load Balancing.

14. The router of claim 13, comprising at least one lookup table for identifying a forwarding element to use.

15. The router of claim 14, wherein said at least one lookup table comprises a first lookup table storing a logical element identifier and a second lookup table storing a physical forwarding element identifier, and whereby said logical forwarding element identifier is used to find the physical forwarding element identifier in said second table so that when a switchover occurs only an entry in the second lookup table need be updated.

16. A method of managing a carrier grade content router in a content based network, comprising:

providing distinct management, control, and data planes;

coordinating and relaying external management requests to appropriate underlying application code in the router in said management plane, said management plane housing externally visible management applications;

running control protocols required within a mark-up language routed network in said control plane; and

receiving and forwarding customer data in said data plane.

17. The method of claim 16, wherein said content routed network is an XML routed network.

18. The method of claim 16, wherein said management plane houses said management applications via implementation of specific protocols, each in a distinct sub-system.

19. A computer program product for managing a carrier grade content router in a content based network, comprising:

computer code for providing distinct management, control, and data planes within said router;

computer code for coordinating and relaying external management requests to appropriate underlying application code in the router in said management plane, said management plane housing externally visible management applications;

computer code for running control protocols required within a content routed network in said control plane; and

computer code for receiving and forwarding customer data in said data plane.

20. The computer program product of claim 19, wherein said content routed network is an XML routed network.

21. The computer program product of claim 19, wherein said computer code for providing said management plane management plane ensures that said management plane houses said management applications via implementation of specific protocols, each in a distinct sub-system.